I have come to think that this is the thing about children that adults most need and most often forget: their willingness to begin again.

Maya had every reason, by any adult accounting, to be wary of the man driving her away from the only place she had ever lived, to be anxious, to grieve the familiar even if the familiar was a group home.

Instead she slept.

She had transferred her whole self to me, completely, on the strength of a few hours and a held collar, and she rested in the back of my car with the total security of a child who has decided that this is home now and sees no reason to doubt it.

Adults protect themselves with history; we remember every disappointment and let it govern the next hope.